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Pinterest for Librarians

One of the things that has surprised me lately is the number of emails I get with questions about Pinterest. I thought it might be handy to put some tips together. I know I am not the first librarian to write about Pinterest, by any means! I hope this helps someone out there though.

How do I use Pinterest?
There is a pretty good help page. Pinterest is still in beta mode, but you can request an invite from Pinterest.com. It sounds like most people are getting them within a few days. If you can't wait, you can email me for an invite, and I'll try to send one on. Not sure how many Pinterest will let me send though. If you have any questions, I will try to answer them, but I am a librarian, not a Pinterest staffer. It is also important to remember that Pinterest is still a start-up and is somewhat prone to crashing. A victim of its own popularity, if you will.

There are also a collaborative board for teen programs, and of course Flannel Friday's page. If I am missing some good boards, leave a comment and let me know, please.

How can I encourage people to pin content from my blog?
I've been experimenting with this a little bit, and I have a few suggestions. First is that Pinterest will not accept a pin if there is no image on that page, so always include an image. It can be an image from Openclipart.org or a banner you made just for that post (like my Pinterest for Librarians banner at the top of this page) in MS Paint. It does not have to be anything fancy.

Another way is to give people a freebie. Whether it is a printable list of 100 books to read in kindergarten, signs to use for library displays, or something else entirely, I see lots of freebies pinned in my feed. This category could also include innovative ideas for marketing a collection, storytime crafts, or really any topic applicable to librarians.

Pins from sotomorrowblog.com

Can I see what has been "pinned" from my blog?
Yes, or for any other site as well. But be careful because it can be addicting to see! And, as always, not everyone will like your content.

2. You can also open any pin and see what else has been pinned from the same site. Down on the left side of the Pinterest site is a box that says Also From (it's highlighted in orange in the image). Click the link and you'll be able to see what others have pinned from that site.

I just finished attending Georgia (and Jessi and Jill)'s webinar and got alot out of it. I was busy pinning starred items on my RSS feed and I had starred this one. Great tips especially nice for a blogger. My first hint Pinterest existed was looking at where my traffic was coming from. And now I'm on"board"!

I've been coming across references to Pinterest but this is the first post I've seen that actually describes it in detail. I hope to find the time to try it in the future although I sure hope they get to fix the crashing problem then.

One little tip I might add...I recently lost some pins and some great resource links. So it is often helpful to put enough key words in the description that you could find the posts again with just a .pdf of your board and all the pins.

I like to do a lot of nursery rhymes with the parachute for a few reasons:Parents/kids are more likely to participate in activities where the content is already familiarI already know them so I don't have to learn a whole bunch of material at once (just being honest here)Easy for the families to replicate this activities at home with whatever props they might have. If they (or you!) don't have a parachute, a bed sheet or blanket can be substituted easily. Even a beach towel would work for one parent and one child to play together. This is my mean reason and I tried to hammer this in at all three programs I did the past two weeks! Parachute …

One of my favorite things to do in my library is create displays. I thought it might be helpful if I shared the calendar that I drew up to make sure I don't miss any of the "must-do" displays. It is so helpful if you can take people over to a seasonal display versus trying to look up in the catalog or find Easter books or whatever. I hope this helps any new librarians who might be overwhelmed by the process of marketing your collection!

As a general rule, I tend to keep displays up for about 3-4 weeks or if I run out of books all together. One tip I'd recommend if you have the space for multiple displays is to change one display in each space every week and rotate around the youth department like that. For example, one week you put up a new picture books display, then nonfiction, then YA/teen, etc. Don't forget to raid your CD and DVD collections for a multi-category display.

Here's one of my favorite parachute activities! I actually mentioned it a few months ago when talking about my summer parachute playtime but it's become a storytime staple since. We've been doing this here at my 2 and 3 year old storytimes and it's a great activity that I thought deserved its own post. I learned the song "Sleeping Bunnies" from Mary and I had the idea to adapt it to a parachute activity.

Here are the words:Sleeping BunniesSee the little bunnies sleeping til it's nearly noon. Come and let us gently wake them with a merry tune. Oh, how are still. Are they ill? Wake up soon. (Here I yell "WAKE UP BUNNIES!" and the kids shake the parachute.)